


This one job, that one time

by IowanCorn



Category: Smallville, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen, annoying your sibling, hunting in Iowa, talking over old jobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 14:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5970157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IowanCorn/pseuds/IowanCorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finally explains the job he was working during the year before he picked up Sam from Stanford. <br/>Sam calls bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I've always thought what would have happened if Jason Teague was actually Dean Winchester - and how he would tell Sam about that year. 
> 
> It follows season 4 of Smallville, from Jason/Dean's knowledge of events only.   
> Any hauntings in Iowa are stories I've found in books, on the Internet, or while on vacation, although the solutions are entirely mine.

“Pork bellies are up five points from a dollar forty five, while sows are down three points from a dollar fifty. Market hogs are steady at a dollar thirty, and . . .”

I reached over and turned off the radio. Not that Iowa doesn’t have rock stations here and there, but even those seem to have the need to bore its audience around noon with the farm futures. After the night I had, there was no way I was going to have my pounding headache increased by listening to a monotone rattling off numbers. Sam didn’t complain when I switched it off – he was too engrossed in the map in his lap to even notice. Either that, or he was still sulking over our escape last night. 

“Sam, is there any particular reason we’re going this way, instead of up the interstate? I mean, if we’re going to hit Waterloo by nightfall, we ought to haul ass.” 

Right there, there was the bitchface. So he was sulking. 

“I mean, the pork tenderloin back at Shellsburg was awesome, but Bobby said that the case in Waterloo was really heating up . . .” 

Somehow, he managed to give me a sour look and stare at his map all at once. “I wasn’t the one who decided that it would be fun to make eyes at that police officer back at the crime scene in Shellsburg. Y’know, the one with two older brothers in the State Patrol, who were about to pound your face in, when they caught the two of you at the Buck ‘n’ Bull?”   
Ah, the Buck ‘n’ Bull. Now there was a bit of fun. Dollar beer all night, a jukebox full of nothing but classic rock, with some Johnny Cash just to even things out, and Sheila. A hundred and twenty pounds of pure TNT, and twice as much fun. Girl could hold her liquor and her cue stick perfectly. 

I must have let out a sigh with the memory, because Sam’s voice got snipper. “Dean. We had to sneak out the window in the ladies room. I think I scraped half of my skin off on the window sill.” I started to chuckle, which only made his tone sharper. “They shot at us, Dean. If it hadn’t been for the dumpster, we’d be lying on the coroner’s table.” 

“Come on, Sam, you have to admit it. Sheila was so totally worth being pounded.” 

My brother let out a sigh of injured aggravation, and turned his attention back to the map. Probably thinking that those yellow and black lines on the worn paper were making more sense than his older brother. Boy seriously needs to learn to loosen up. 

I let him have a minute of quiet before opening up another line of attack. If nothing else, it would be more amusing than listening to the farm report on the radio. “So, you remember when I told you about that job I was working, right before I picked you up at Stanford?” He nodded, only half listening to me as he tried to find a way to get to Waterloo without popping back up on the interstate – at least, that’s what I think he was doing. The way this trip was going, he could have been trying to find a nice quiet place to bury my ass. Still, he answered me back, “Yeah, you said you were doing a job down in New Orleans. Which must have been real fun, considering the hurricane.”

So the snark was still there. Good. “Well, I lied. It wasn’t N’oleans.” 

His only reply was a bemused snort. Well, at least I had his attention. Now to present the hook.   
“It was actually Orleans.” I watched out of the corner of my eye as he paused, fingertip on the red line on the map. He stared out the window at the rows of corn whizzing by, and I had to fight down the smile that threatened to creep out onto my face. I didn’t have to wait that long. 

“Orleans, where?” 

Bait taken. 

“Orleans, France.” 

He stared over at me in utter disbelief. It took him a while to find his voice. “Orleans, France.” His echo was a mixture of curiosity and confusion. “France. As in, over the Atlantic ocean, next to Germany, France.” I waited it out. I knew there was more outburst coming, and if I wanted to set the hook, I couldn’t rush this. I didn’t have that long to wait. “Dean. You don’t fly. You hate flying. What the hell, no, how in the hell did you end up doing a job over in France?”

Hook was set. Now all I had to do was to ply out the line and my afternoon entertainment was set.

I cleaned out my throat with a cough, and gave my brother a shrug. “I know, dude, planes are nothing but flying coffins. But Caleb had dug up this witch thing, and thought it might come home to roost here in the States for some oddball reason he was keeping to himself. Dad was already dealing with some shit down in Arkansas – or at least, that’s what I thought he was dealing with at the time – but anyway, Dad agreed with Caleb that it was important enough, so I went to France.” I slid my attention from the road over to where Sam was staring at me, with his mouth wide open. If he kept it open like that, he was going to swallow a fly. Fortunately for the fly, I could see the question coming.   
“Dad said, ‘go to France’ and you just went.”

I gave him my best wide-open no shit there it was expression. “Yep, Dad said, ‘go to France’ so I went to France. Dude, it was Dad. What else was I suppose to do?” 

Sam’s mouth closed with a snap I could have heard over in the next county, and his expression turned mulish. “Okay, so, you went to France. To Orleans.” 

I gave a short nod, sealing the deal. “Right.” Sam was still sitting straight up in the shotgun seat, staring over at me with full-on suspicion. “Okay, it started out in Orleans, but I didn’t find much there, until this chick popped up on one of those artsy field trips through the churches there.” Sam’s nose was quivering with disgusted amusement, and I could tell where this detour in the fishing trip was going to go.

“Did you think she was as hot as Sheila?” The question was smooth enough, but unlike Sam, I can see where that hook was buried in his bait. “Dude. She was a high school senior. Eighteen, but a high school senior. Not only that, but she wasn’t even French.”   
“And.”  
“Sam!”  
“And.”  
Now the kid was ticking me off a bit. I am not that big of horndog, evidence to the contrary. “And she spiked on my EMF meter so high, it shorted out the battery.” I shot him a look of wounded dignity and the kid wilted. “Alright, so you thought she was a lead.” I let out a huff, only to find myself momentarily engrossed in keeping a couple of asshat semi-trailers from running the Impala out of her lane. Damn dicks. When the last bit of gravel pinged off the Impala’s windshield, and we had the road to ourselves again, I went back to needling my brother. 

“Actually, she was my only lead. Caleb’s contacts over there were busy dispatching a couple of laupu-garou, and I was pretty much the only one looking up weird tombs in the churchyards. They also seemed to think that Caleb had gotten worked up over nothing, so yeah, this Lana chick was my next stop. So, when her tour left, I followed her back to her school in Paris.”  
“You followed her back to Paris. What happened?”  
There wasn’t even a hint of a bitchface left. I could possibly milk this for the next couple of days if I played my cards right.

“I was using a Vespa to keep an eye on her, and let me tell you driving even that thing in the streets of Paris is like driving my baby around Boston. There’s no way . . .”  
Of course he interrupted. I have him timed down to the last tick of the second hand.   
“You were driving around Paris on a Vespa?”  
“Hey, trips to France are expensive, dude. It’s not like I’m made of Euros.”  
“Okay, so, you were puttering around Paris on a moped.”

I fought the urge to smack him upside the head. This story was supposed to be for my amusement, not his. “As I was saying, I was using this Vespa to keep an eye on her, and she thought I was trying to steal her purse, so,” I gave him my best wince, “she knocked me off the bike and into the street, right in front of the café she was sitting at.”   
Sam bit his lip, and I could tell he was fighting a snicker. “Were you trying to steal her purse?”

“Hey!” My protest of innocence went without notice, so I went ahead and admitted. “Of course I was. The chick was sitting there, nearly in the curb, and I needed to figure out who the hell she was. It was painful, but in the end, her knocking me on my ass and nearly getting me run over in traffic was the best way to get close to her.”   
I watched him fight it out between snickering at me on cute girly Vespa and his curiosity at the case he’d never heard of. I just let him stew for a bit. Besides, my baby was getting low on gas, which meant there were more important things to attend to.


	2. Crusade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean explains what he was doing in France.  
> Sam gets them to their next job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, gas stations around here in Iowa sell bowls of hot soup as a to-go item.   
> I don't understand it, either.

I passed by the first gas station we came to – Cerico doesn’t sell anything but that ethanol crap, and I don’t put anything but actual gas in the Impala. Not even in Iowa, where that stuff makes the fuel a good ten cents cheaper. I tried it once, and her engine ended up with a knock that took me a full weekend under the hood to smooth out. The lights were still on at the PB tho’ and I pulled her up and over to the last pump. Sam looked up from the maps he had spread across his lap when I put her in park. “What, we’re not stopping at McDonald’s?” I favored him with a well-earned smirk. “Well, I would, but they normally don’t sell gas. At least, not the type that my sweetheart here can use.” I got the quick bitchface I was expecting, and we both clambered out of the front seat. 

I started to fill the car up with gas, only to look up and finding my brother staring at me like he’s never seen before. Okay, so maybe I baited this story with too big of a worm. Maybe I could distract him a moment, so I gestured towards where the clerk was looking at us through the store window. “Go get us some lunch. Something greasy, but not roadkill.” Sam snorted with derision. “And pie.” I leaned up against the car, and looked over at him in expectation. I got a grimace in response. 

“What, didn’t you have any pie when you were over in France, or was it just baguettes?” 

What the hell sort of question was that? “Of course I had pie. What the hell do you think I ate? Snails?” I clicked the handle a couple of times to make sure the tank was topped off before returning it to the pump. “They dollified it up, calling it a tart or something even more girly, but I know pie when I eat it.” I wiped my hands off on my jeans. “And it tasted like pie.” Sam did that half headshake wince he does when he thinks I’m acting like I’m five, but hey, it was a stupid question. Pie’s pie.

I stepped over the island, between the pumps and Sam followed me at what he normally considers to be a safe distance when he thinks I’m being an idiot. We headed towards the door of the station. “So, this case in France.” Oh, did I have him hooked but good. I’d of bet five bucks that the kid would stay up and hit the internet looking for stuff on this job, if I’d had anybody besides Sam to bet with. I opened the door and looked over my shoulder at him, trying my best to look as peeved as possible. “Yeah, the case in France. Caleb got this report off the ‘net that this millionaire’s son had dug up an old, played out tomb in Egypt, looking for this artifact on Caleb’s big mojo taboo list. So, he asked Dad and I to go retrieve it before some damned fool went and killed himself with it. Or got other people killed with it. Or both.” I gave a brief ‘no harm here, dude’ smile to the idiot clerk behind the counter in case he overheard, and headed towards the sandwiches. Sam closed ranks and ended up looking over my shoulder. “Dean. You’re not making any sense. Why go to France to get the artifact that was in Egypt?” 

I suppressed a grin, and started picking out the freshest chicken sandwiches from the overheated selection in the stand. Sam stood behind me – I could practically hear his mental gears grinding over what I had told him. I’ve found that ignoring my brother while I’m leading him on with only part of the story is the best way to get him to pay attention. “No, Caleb already had somebody else in Egypt, some doctor or whatever, but while she was digging up the info on it, she came across some church graves in France that the same sort of markings as the stuff down in Egypt. So he figured that the two were connected.” I held up a bacon cheeseburger that had only been sitting in the warmer for the last twenty minutes. “You going to eat?” 

Sam wrinkled up his nose at it – it was fine, by the way, it had at least ten more minutes before they were going to throw it out – and shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t want indigestion that badly.” He managed to scoot around me without knocking over the display of bananas, and disappeared into the next aisle over. 

In a few minutes, he came back with soup. Seriously. I take everything I’ve got up to the register, hand the clerk our current credit card, and find out the bowl he’s set down next to the fried pies contains soup. “Soup? Who the hell buys soup to go?” The idiot clerk taking my cash immediately pipes up. “Oh, it’s one of our best sellers. Our chicken noodle is considered to be the best in the four county area.” I scowl at him, and Sam tries for an explanation. “I didn’t like the look of the lettuce, and it smelled pretty good, so I’d thought I’d give it a try.” I turned the scowl on Sam, but it doesn’t work the same on him as it does strangers so I gave in. Partway. “Dude. You get any – one drop of that – on the seat or the floor of my car, and you will find yourself out in the cold, on the side of the road. Got it?” 

I took the receipt and my dinner off the counter, and stormed out of the station. “Soup. What the hell is the world coming to?” 

Sam trailed after me in a few minutes. I’m sure he was apologizing to the clerk – it’s the sort of thing he does, I have no idea where he picked it up from – but here he came, balancing that bowl-cup thingie that was letting off steam into the cold afternoon air. Alright, so it was hot and it might of tasted good, all things considered, but it was soup. In the car. Of course, it turned out that Sam had bought a couple of chocolate bars, and I’m not above bribery when food’s involved, but still. Soup. 

I was kind enough to wait until he and his soup were settled in the seat next to me before I took off. Not that I didn’t have a thought or two to the contrary, but I figured I’d just have to go back and get him later on, and the trouble wouldn’t be worth it. He didn’t bother talking to me until I got underway, and I didn’t talk to him, until I decided I needed to stop his slurping. “So, there I was, in Paris . . . “

“And this girl had knocked you off your Vespa and onto your ass.” I swear sometimes my brother’s not worth the trouble I take. “Hey, who’s the hell’s story is this anyways?” Sam tried to cover up his smirk with another slurp of soup, and I seriously considered finding a gravel road full of pot holes. If it wouldn’t of played havoc with the old girl’s suspension, I would have. Instead, I just eased her back out onto the two lane highway we had been traveling down the whole afternoon. “Yeah, well, she was the one setting off the EFM, so I figured she was probably up to her pretty little neck in something dicey.”

I tried to ignore Sam as he fished a limp piece of tomato – at least, I think it was tomato – out of his bowl. “So what was she? Witch, possessed, what?” I glanced over to where my brother had started to drink down the broth straight out of the bowl. “No, but she was part of the case. Well, not at that point, I think it was her weird-ass necklace that was setting off the EMF, actually. Later on, things got weird.” I thought over that year. “Well, weirder.” Sam frowned, and I’m really pretty sure it was the case that was getting to him, and not the lame ass vegetables. 

“So, she knocked you into traffic, and then?” I shrugged. “And then we spent the next five hours at the local clinic, because sprawling out there on pavement screwed up my old football injury.” I grinned at the memory. “Nothing like a wounded warrior to attract the ladies.” Now I had Sam scowling something fierce at me, and as I realized why, I could have kicked myself in the ass. “Old football injury?” Damn.

I stuffed a couple of the potato wedges into my mouth, and hoped to hell I’d come up with a loose enough answer that would keep my brother from asking too many questions about the wrong case. “Dean. Since when did you ever play football?” I swallowed the potatoes and came up with an answer. “Yeah, well, it was my left knee, and, okay, it wasn’t football, it was where that water dog had grabbed it.” Damn thing had nearly pulled me under before Dad got enough room to shoot it. Still, it got ganked, and I’m still here. Problem was, now there was dead silence over on the other side of the car. I snuck a peek over at Sam. That pang of guilt that passed over my brother’s face confirmed the fact that I hadn’t told that story to him yet either, like I thought. Damn. “Yeah, that was a year after you took off for Sanford.” 

“Dean.”  
“Sam, it was no big deal, just a twinge or two. I was fine.” I grudgingly gave a shrug. “Well, it was fine, until I landed on that pavement with the knee under me.” I licked the grease and salt off my fingers. “And a couple of painkillers with a pretty girl sitting next to me, apologizing six ways to Sunday, patched me up slick enough.”   
“Dean.”   
“Seriously, Sam, let it go. It was just a normal hunt with Dad. Nothing you could have done about it at the time, even if you were there.”   
A long exhale of breath from the other side of the front seat let me know he was dropping the matter. Well, for right then – I’d probably have to explain the whole thing to him later on. 

Good. Back to the tale I wanted to torture him with. 

“So. These weird ass Egyptian curlicues were on some of the graves in this huge ass church in Paris, too, right?” I took a bite or two out of the sandwich before looking over to see if Sam was back on the same page as I was. He wiped a bit of soup from the corner of his mouth, and gave me a look that full on regarded me as an uncouth, uncultured jackass. So sue me, I don’t use fancy names for things. “You mean, the symbols from the Egyptian tomb were on some grave effigies in one of the cathedrals.” I slurped a mouthful of cola as a reply before returning insult for insult. “Right, like I said, big ass church. Anyway, the main symbol that Caleb had on his list I found was on this brass covering of a grave of a countess. The chick I was keeping an eye on, Lana, had this art assignment for brass rubbings – don’t ask me what the hell for, it was her class – so I figure it would be easier to get her to get a rubbing of the symbol, rather than have me down on my knees and end up rubbing either girl up the wrong way.” 

You know, you have a dirty mind, Dean.” I kept the uncouth uncultured smirk right where it was. “You know, that’s exactly what Lana said to me when I suggested going to the church for her project.” I took another drink of soda before continuing. “Only she called me Jason, when she accused me because Dad and Caleb came up with this cockamamie cover story for me while I was over there.” I paused to stuff the last potato wedges into my mouth while Sam shook his head in disbelief. “No rock aliases?”

“I know, I know, I protested at the time,” I shrugged the oddity off, “but it seems there was this idiot Jason Teague, a real blueblooded dickwad, who got himself locked up in a Mexican jail somewhere a while back.” I shrugged again, because Sam was looking at me like I had grown an extra nose, or something. “Or at least that’s the last anyone’s been able to find out about him - not that anyone’s actually been looking for him.” I turned the Impala off of Hwy 8 and onto 21, with no sight of the cops anywhere. We must of ditched them at the county line. “Anyway, it seems that this Teague family was into this mystic archelogy circle, and Caleb figured I might get a few more doors open over there, if I pretended if I was him.” 

Sam frowned. “And nobody would figure you weren’t Jason? That seems hard to believe.” I had argued the point with Dad and Caleb at the time, only to lose. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but it turns out that nobody in France had even heard of the Teagues, much less cared two shits if I was or wasn’t Jason.” I turned the wheel to swing the Impala around a Jeep Wrangler that was puttering down the highway in front of us. Sam snorted, and I scowled at him. “Probably better than if you used your normal alibis – somebody would want to hear you sing.” 

“Shut up, Sam.” 

Like I figured, instead of shutting up, he just kept on nosing back to the case, “So, this symbol, what was it, hieroglyphs?” I slowed the Impala down at the crossing. “Maybe. Caleb thought it was, sort of but not one I’d ever seen. It was a pair of parallel lines, like skis with the bent ends, but with loops in the middle on the outside of the lines. Oh, and there were dots, one at the end of the line – one on the top, towards the left and one at the bottom, towards the right.” Now I had gotten Sam’s nose all scrunched up, with his brain delving into the copy of the Encyclopedia of the Weird he has stored up there. “I just figured it was somebody’s attempt at an better mojo, seeing as it was on somebody’s tombstone. Well, on her shield on her tombstone, so it could have been just a heraldic thing.” Sam had his eyes closed, probably paging through the encyclopedia on the inside of his eyelids, so I kept trying to explain it. “Again, it wasn’t any sort of heraldry that I’ve seen before. I dunno.” 

“Whose tombstone – I mean, brass effigy was it?” I blinked, and had to come up with the bitch’s name – it had been a while, but I was the one who let the research hound out on this trail. I mean, we had a case up in Waterloo, one that promised to be nothing but a simple salt and burn, so Sam claimed, but still, my fault, so I guess I ought to let him follow it through. “Umm, a Countess Isabella Thoreau-something or other.” Sam frowned and reached for Dad’s diary where it sat under the front seat. “I don’t think he wrote it down, dude. It was my case, not his.” Didn’t stop him from rummaging under the seat until he fished it out. I just let him leaf through the pages – who knew, maybe Dad had written this case down in a footnote or something. I decided the best thing would be to continue on, at least until we got to Waterloo. 

“Anyway, I showed Lana this effigy, just in case she found a better one somewhere else in the church and decided to do that one instead. Of course, it helped that the lady in brass rubbing looked just like Lana.” I could hear Sam stop in mid-page turn. “The effigy looked like her?” Now I had done it. “Maybe – who could tell, she was in all medieval get up with just her eyes, nose and mouth peeking out. I told Lana it did to get her to help me out.” 

“It also helped to distract her with a kiss on the cheek.” Sam gave me an odd look, so I clarified, “I gave Lana a kiss on the cheek. Jeez.” Okay so, it was a full on tongue and lip lock in one of nooks of the church, but Sam doesn’t need to know everything, “Told her to get at it, while I went and set up breakfast for the two of us the next morning.” I glanced over at Sam, and found him stuck as various thoughts went pinging off the inside of his skull. I turned my attention back to the road and waited to see which question would win the battle and popped out of his mouth first.

“You kissed her?” Of course, that one would pop out first. And he calls me a pervert. “Yes, Sam, I kissed her.” We had decided on the whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing once we got out of the clinic. Well, she decided on it, and I went with it, since it was easier for me to keep tabs on her without getting the teacher and god knows who down on my case as a stalker. I tightened my grip on the wheel, and kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead of us. “And yes, I know it was a little skeevy, with her being barely eighteen and all, but at the time, it seemed like the easiest way to do it. It’s not like I was sleeping with her, or anything. Give me a little credit here.” 

“She was a high school senior, Dean.” I mentally pinched back a sigh. Obviously, this needed more clarity. “She said she was eighteen, she was old enough to be alone by herself in Paris, and I was only 22 at the time. It wasn’t that impossible.” I decided the best defense was an offense – not like that – and just plowed ahead. “So, long story short, I left her there with warrior princess Issy, and ducked around to the nave of the church.” Sam stared at me with skepticism in one of his more familiar, and I think, better looking grimaces. “You left her there, with a possible cursed grave covering, with some charcoal and a large sheet of paper.” I rolled my eyes and concentrated on not having the Impala ending up in the ditch as some weird insect looking farm equipment turned off onto the highway from a gravel road in front of us. “I didn’t leave leave her there, I just left her alone with it to see if anything would happen. I mean, we were in a church, an old Gothic monstrosity from the Middle Ages, and most demons normally give those things a wide berth.” 

Sam had to give in on that point. I mean, not all demons and wicked stuff care about churches, but I figured nothing evil enough to hang out in a church without caring would decide to pick on a high school art exchange student. Even if she was good looking with all of the curves in the right places. At least, that’s what I thought the odds were at the time.

“And.” 

“And nothing happened. No sulfur smells. Nothing.” I waited for my brother to sink back into the Impala’s upholstery. “Except when I got half way down the aisle, there was this bright ass light from where I had left her – well, not quite as bright as Cas’s flashbulb acts, but bright enough that I knew something had happened back in that room.” Sam wasn’t sure whether to act smug or kill me for leading him on. Since the Impala was still on the road, he settled on smug. “So, it was cursed. Or blessed, or something.” I shrugged. “Hell, at the time, I had no idea what it was. When I got back there, and snuck a peek into the alcove, Lana was still on her knees rubbing the charcoal against the paper like nothing had happened.” 

“So, you did what, exactly?”

“I left her there.” Sam had his serious frown on, the one he saves for Tuesdays, so I explained further. “She wasn’t frothing at the mouth or anything, and I didn’t want her to think things were weird. I had some books back at the room that Caleb had shoved into my luggage before I left his place. I thought I could figure it out.”   
“And.”   
“Nada.”  
Sam was about to kill me, I swear. Full on axe murder.

“I mean it. There was nothing in the lore about bright lights or curses, just that these weird ass symbols kept showing up when least expected. I sorta decided it was a glare or something from a window. The place was full of faulty window glares and shadows and . . . things.” The sign on the side of the road showed that we had eight miles to Waterloo, Iowa, and the sun was inching down towards the horizon on my left. “It only got strange when I went to meet Lana for breakfast. We had agreed on ten o’clock, but she still hadn’t gotten to the cafe by noon. When I went to her apartment and pounded on the door, she answered it in nothing but a towel, dripping wet, and acting like she had caught the flu.” 

“Maybe she had.”

“No, it was weird. I mean, she met me downstairs after a few minutes, and she tried to act normal, but something was off. We ate some lunch – a sandwich for me and some coffee for her – and then she dashed back up to her apartment. So, I came up to her apartment that evening, seeing if she wanted some soup or something for dinner, in case she had got the bug, but she was gone.” 

“What?”

“I mean it, Sam, she had packed everything she could carry, and had moved out between lunch and dinner. All I found was a scrawled note on some scrap of paper from her sketch book, saying that she had to go home – wherever the hell that was – and she was sorry to leave like this.”  
“Dude, that’s cold, even for your dates.” 

Alright, that was enough. Time to change the subject until I could come up with something juicier. “So, where’s this job that Bobby wants us to check out?” Sam really didn’t want to let up on this one, but I pointed out that Waterloo was just over the horizon. “Alright, so you’ll come up here on interstate twenty – go straight, until . . . .”  
I thought over how Lana had left me, as I followed the directions to the job that Sam rattled off from the map. Sam was right, it had been a cold break up, even for a love’m and leave’m guy like me. I was about to explain why she had left like she did, when I pulled the Impala into the parking lot of the haunted building. 

“Dude, this is a Walmart.”

“Yeah, it is. But get this, it’s not just a Walmart, it’s a haunted Walmart.”

I swear, my little brother knows how to pick them.


End file.
